OPTIMISING AND SUSTAINING INVESTMENTS

THE kingdom has set ambitious goals aiming at driving economic growth. We have seen economic diplomacy undertaken by His Majesty. Also, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Trade working together with the Eswatini Investment Promotion Agency, going full-scale in attracting investors into the country.

I note that we are now moving in the direction of attracting high value investments or STEM investments. Rightly so, the country should align with the world and move into high value profitable industries. I commend those efforts; however, I advise that we do not have to live other industries to die.  We need a wholistic industrialisation plan, we need to always be cognisant that every policy action will result in gainers and losers. We need to do well as a country to mitigate loses on the loser and ensure maximum benefits to the gainers.

Harnessing investments

As we drive the country towards growth and opening up new investment avenues, we need to understand the constraints and immediate social problems that we are facing as a country. The country is battling with a high rate of unemployment and high poverty levels. I contend that if we steered the economy towards creating jobs, then we could solve half our problems regarding the forestated problems. Harnessing tech-related investments requires that we lower the costs of entry. This we can do through retraining of our labour force that is in excess supply. Most developed countries always explore retraining and industry alignment as a source of growth. According to the skills audit report, labour seems to be in excess supply because it is not aligning to the needs of the job market. I would like to believe that the skills are not that distantly misaligned. It is easier to retrain a computer science graduate on AI and robotics for example.

Also, it would be relatively cheaper for the country to retrain finance specialists on financial technologies. What we would require is some investments on retooling our labour supply to be relevant for the market. In this way we make it easier for FDI to circumvent training issues, making entry and se-tup in Eswatini relatively cheaper compared with comparator countries in the region.

Skills transfer

At the core of our industrialisation policy should be skills transfer so that we grow sustainable industry. FDI should through tax incentives and other investor incentives be encouraged to open up space to the locals. EmaSwati need to have access to global supply chains so that when industries shift locals can still be in a position to continue running some industries.
It is a given fact that new industries will always emerge and investor’s appetite will always shift to new sectors. We need to ensure that industries that we have already established do not die when new industries are born.

We must endeavour to ensure that we find ways to utilise skills that are developed in new industries, even when market conditions shift. The beauty of skills acquired is that they cannot be taken away, all that is required is to find new market niches and be allowed to thrive. Also, retraining of the labour that was utilised in industries that are no longer viable is important. A proper analysis is required to ensure that we find the nearest uses for our labour in budding industries. Skills with sector specificity will require a full training programme. Our industrialisation endeavours must take into cognisance the potential losers from policy action to ensure that all our people benefit from policy action.

Training programmes

I call upon the Ministry of Education and Training, Ministry of Labour & Social Security and The Eswatini Higher Education Council to work with our tertiary and vocational training institutions to develop a five year comprehensive training programme. It should be incumbent on this tripartite to always review our training programmes in alignment with industry requirements. We need to ensure that our training institutions review their programmes every three to five years to always ensure that they are aligned with industry needs.

 If we were to constantly do this as a country, we would avoid the problems of structural unemployment as revealed by the skills audit report. Structural unemployment is a scenario where people are without jobs, because their skills are not aligned with market requirements, not because there are no jobs. We need a dynamic training sector to always ensure that our labour force is aligned with the times, the job market is too dynamic for our training institutions at present.

People centred industrialisation

As we move to industrialisation, I call on the government to ensure that a people centric approach is adopted. We always need to ensure that we ask the question, “how will our people be affected by this policy move?”  Lastly, let me commend the government on efforts such as LUSIP and the Mkhondvo-Ngwavuma Dam Augmentation project. Such projects target the poorest of our people and catalyse mechanisation of agriculture. These are the low hanging fruits that we should leverage as we industrialise. Our people should always have a place within the value chain.

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